NEW YORK, Sept. 5, 2017 — (PRNewswire) — The Crew, a cinematic 360 narrative short film, is set to tell the story of a Filipino cruise ship worker who uses opera karaoke to cope with his difficult working conditions. The film is part of Google's inaugural Jump Start program which supports select 360 video projects.
The Crew is inspired by writer Jason Ferguson's personal experience living and working onboard cruise ships.

The story is of a cabin steward named Benjo who is preparing to sing his favorite opera aria, Vesti La Giubba from Pagliacci. He is about to have a chance to perform in a crew talent show that is being assembled quickly to provide entertainment to passengers while the ship waits out a storm at sea. But while practicing in his cabin, Benjo learns the show has been cancelled.

"While I was working on cruise ships producing the stage shows, I became friends with many of the crew onboard," said Jason Ferguson, writer of the film and former theatre producer and personal assistant to Puff Daddy. "The stories I would hear about how the lower ranked, mostly Filipino, crew were treated have always stuck with me. It was this experience that inspired me to tell this story."

The film is designed to push forward how narrative stories are told in 360.

"VR is often called an empathy machine and we wanted to use this aspect of it to add to the emotional story being told," said Johan Anderson, director of 'The Crew' who recently directed commercials starring Misty Copeland and Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown. "Documentaries having done a great job of using 360 video to stir this kind of empathy, but we wanted to do the same for narrative storytelling."

The Crew is part of the first group of 20 projects selected by Google for their VR content creators program. The Google
Jump Start program is a program aiming to connect creators with VR cameras.

Although cruise ship staff are made up of many nationalities, Filipinos are by far the largest, especially for low-ranking positions such as cabin cleaners.